Merry Christmas Walter Kovacs
by The Deathly Princess
Summary: A dark Christmas eve with a twist for the darkest of the Watchmen Note. There were some issues with the lettering before but this has been fixed


Set after the Keen Act came into effect but some time before the death of The Comedian. Obviously I do not own anything, I'm just borrowing them to play with.

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Midnight. Fat, drunk and stinking, a fake Santa sits in the gutter singing and throwing up. Tomorrow, well today really is Christmas Eve. He hates Christmas with it's cheap finery and the way people use it as an excuse to get rotten drunk and pig out on enough food to feed half a dozen starving families. The hunched figure, hat pulled down low and collar turned up against the blowing snow hurries across the street to disappear among the shadowy alleys on the other side.

The kid is maybe 16 he looks like a walking skeleton; all staring eyes and papery skin over too prominent bones. Moved to pity, remembering his own youth, the hunched figure pulls a couple of bills out of his pocket. "Get something to eat, kid." He grates. The kid looks terrified. Hopped up and coming down badly, he thinks the monster man with the weird, shifting not-face beneath his hat is going to eat him. A knife flashes. He is quick, the masked man. Violence is as natural to him as breathing and the knife falls from the kid's twisted hand. The masked man shows uncharacteristic compassion. He does not break the fine, trembling bones that lie between his strong fingers. He eases his grip, forces the bills into the kid's palm and closes his fingers over it. "Get something to eat." He repeats.

Walking away the masked man remembers Christmases from his youth. His mother, swilling gin with her 'friends' and dancing with lewd abandon. The cheap, tawdry glitter that seemed to fill the world with its garish glare. He shakes his head to clear the unwanted images. Perhaps he should visit Daniel. Daniel's a good man, a quiet man. He turns and begins heading back the way he has come. The cold wind and the snow don't seem to be touching him any more. He feels warm and strangely detached. Midnight is black, he tells himself but somehow it seems to be getting blacker, darker.

He is lying on the ground. He can't remember how. There is a street lamp maybe 10 feet away that sheds a yellowish, diseased looking light on the alley floor, on the garbage and the filth and on one, very confused masked man. He tries to get up but his legs won't move and his arms feel like lead. The feeling of warmth has leeched away and he shivers. A shadow moves toward him. He tries again to get up, to prepare himself for the attack he knows is coming. He cannot move. The shadow bends over him and he waits for the death he is sure it brings. The light goes out.

He opens his eyes. Still alive then. Still wearing his mask, his face. He is lying in a bed. Someone has taken his hat, his coat, his shoes and his shirt leaving him in his undershirt and his pants. There is a bandage on his left bicep. The arm is stiff and sore but he can lift it now and move it. He sits up. The room is small but very clean and very neat. The furniture is old; a bed, a dresser, a wardrobe and a chair, it is all well cared for and the wood glows with polish.

The smell of food, some kind of stew, makes his mouth water and his stomach growl. There is a sound outside the room. A woman's voice. He listens but cannot identify it. The door opens and a woman looks into the room. She is young, and has a soft, kind face. There is a scar like a crescent moon under her left eye. "You are awake." Her voice is like her face, soft, gentle. He is wary but he does not move. "You were bleeding to death." She says.

He remembers the kid, the knife. He had been quick, but not quick enough. The kid must have cut him and he never realised. "Why?" He has so many questions that need answering but he cannot articulate them all at once. The woman seems to understand. "I'm a nurse. I found you on my way home from the hospital. Your brachial artery was severed. You were bleeding to death. If I didn't help you, you would have died." She moves further into the room, approaching him cautiously, carefully. "I know who you are." She adds. "I know what you do."

She should be afraid of him. But he gets the feeling that she is trying not to frighten him. She moves like a woman approaching some trapped wild thing. "Would you like some stew?" She asks. He shakes his head. "Got beans?" He asks. She goes away and comes back with a tray. There is a plate of beans a glass of water and a cup of hot, black coffee. She leaves him to his meal.

The beans are hot, warming him. He finishes them quickly, downs the coffee and drinks the water then leans back, satisfied. He is not one for analysing his feelings but he tries to understand why he does not just get up and leave. She has helped him, true. Maybe she saved his life. He can't stay awake, his eyes close and he sleeps.

He wakes, it is dark and very quiet. He needs to use the bathroom. He finds that he can stand and walk without too much trouble, though he tires quickly. The woman is sleeping sitting upright on the lumpy old couch. She wakes as he leans on the back of the sofa to catch his breath. He half-expects her to try to help him but she does not interfere with his little tour of the tiny apartment. The living room is sparsely furnished; the sofa, one armchair, a table with a radio and two book cases full of books.. There is no cheap Christmas glitter here, no tinsel or gimcrack baubles. Green branches tied with red ribbons are hung here and there. The kitchen is spotless and the bathroom almost clinical, all white tile and white porcelain. He knows that she is alert, that she will come if he falls or if he becomes to weak to get himself back to bed, but she sits, silent and motionless until he closes the bedroom door behind him.

"Merry Christmas." The woman with the kind face stands beside the bed. He stirs, smells coffee and beans His stomach growls again. She does not seem to mind his silence. He has spoken only three words to her since he woke for the first time. She does not chatter or ask him questions. She tells him that breakfast is in the kitchen and hands him his shirt, clean and pressed with an almost invisible repair on the upper part of the left sleeve. He finds his shoes under the bed, placed neatly together.

Walking into the kitchen he feels stronger. He sits down at the tiny table where she has laid out a huge plate of beans and cup of coffee. He waits for her to turn away before he rolls up his mask to his nose and starts eating. She seems to know instinctively that he does not like to be watched, that he does not want her to see beneath the mask. She stands with her back half turned toward him. so that she is not looking at him but he can see her face in profile, judge her expressions. She is drinking coffee and looking out of the kitchen window.

"Why?" He asks again. "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men." She answers. "We make our own heaven or our own hell. Each of us must do what we can to make the world a better place, even if it is only a small thing." She brushes hair off her temple. "I can't do what you do. So I do what I know how to do. There are children on the street, they could grow into good people if we can get them away from the gangs and the pimps and the pushers. If we can get them back into school, back into society. He wonders what she would make of the kid that had cut him.

"People are always falling through the cracks, decent men and woman who end up on the street through no fault of their own." She sighs. "I volunteer at a shelter. We can't do any more than give them a hot meal, somewhere safe to sleep when it's too cold, maybe some clean clothes and the opportunity to take a bath if they want to. Treat the little wounds and infections they pick up;." She tipped her cup toward him. "Or help a man I happen to find dying in an alley."

He finishes the beans, drains the coffee cup and rolls his mask down again. "Could have left me, called 911." She turns back to face him. "I could not. What kind of human being would just pass a dying man in the street?" He shakes his head. "Plenty would." She sighs again. "Don't give up on humanity just yet." She takes the empty cup and plate from him and stands at the sink washing dishes with her back to him.

He has been here long enough. He looks around and sees his hat and coat hanging beside the front door. "Thanks" He does not wait for an answer. Walking out into the hall he does not hear her whisper. "Merry Christmas Walter Kovacs."

Daniel acts pleased to see him but he knows that he is the phantom at the feast. He tells Daniel about the kid and the woman. Daniel stares at him. "Wow man. Are you alright?" He asks. "People get crazy during the holidays." Daniel holds out a newspaper. "Look at this." A photo of a skinny kid with staring eyes. "He's just been arrested for the murder of Alice Lawton." It could be the kid in the alley, the kid with the knife or some other kid. Rorschach shrugs. It only confirms his opinion that the city is no longer worth saving. He remembers the story. Last year, Christmas eve, a woman who volunteered in homeless shelters and soup kitchens had been killed by one of the down-and-outs she was trying to save. Cut her throat and robbed her. "It took them a whole year to find out who did it." Daniel marvels. "Hey the Lawton woman was a nurse too." He adds.

It's amazing that they kept on with the investigation at all, but the woman was well liked. With a strange feeling Rorschach takes the paper from Daniel and looks at the other photo. Alice Lawton was a young woman with a soft, kind face and scar in the shape of a crescent moon under her left eye.


End file.
